Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

The Heritage Foundation's Privacy Policy
Your privacy on the Internet is important to us. As part of the operation and customization feature of The Heritage Foundation's web site ("heritage.org"), we gather certain types of information from users, and we would like to explain the types of information we gather, what we do with them, and how to correct or change the information. The privacy policies for heritage.org also apply to the Heritage Insights Panel.

Information Collected By heritage.org
heritage.org collects two types of information from users: personal data such as zip code, email address and demographic information; and aggregated data such as information about traffic patterns on heritage.org (for example, how many users log on to heritage.org on a daily basis).

Aggregated Information
Aggregated information, such as which pages users visit, is collected through various means. One of these ways is through an IP address, a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web. Web servers, the computers that "serve up" Web pages, automatically identify your computer by its IP address. When you request a page from heritage.org, our servers log your IP address. heritage.org does not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable, so although your session will be logged, your session will remain anonymous to us. heritage.org collects IP addresses for the purposes of system administration only.

Use of Cookies
heritage.org uses cookies to automate the process of logging on to certain areas of the site. The heritage.org cookie is a small data file stored on your computer that contains a single, randomly assigned user ID number. By recognizing this ID number, heritage.org can automatically provide you with the personalized content for which you requested. Cookies can neither read any other files on your computer, nor damage your computer. Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you'd prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent.

Use of Information Collected by heritage.org
heritage.org uses both the personal and aggregated information we collect for multiple purposes. The information is used to improve the content of the site, to customize the content and/or layout of the site for each individual user, target promotions on other sitesand if requested, to provide information services by email to the user. After registration, users will receive a single email message confirming registration. The Heritage Foundation will never disclose your personally identifiable information to a third party outside the Heritage family of organizations unless required to do so by court order, law or governmental agency.

Information Security at heritage.org
Heritage Foundation employees understand the need for user privacy and access to user data is strictly limited and can only be accessed by specific individuals who have the necessary username and password combination.

Children and Privacy
The Heritage Foundation encourages parents and guardians to spend time with their children online and to be fully familiar with the sites visited by their children. In general, heritage.org will not contain content that is reasonably considered unsuitable for children.

Mailing List Information

From time to time, we make our contributor list of both offline and online donors available to other organizations to mail. This process is carefully controlled, and it is our hope that you may find information from these groups interesting and helpful. This also saves us a considerable amount of money, which can be used to preserve and protect our shared values. If you would like to be excluded from this, please call us at (800) 546-2843, and we’ll make sure your name is not included in our mailing list sharing activities.

Links to Other Sites
It is important to note that heritage.org contains links to sites other than heritage.org, and that those sites may not follow the same privacy policies as heritage.org. For instance, a link in the "External Resources" section of heritage.org will take you away from heritage.org to an entirely different site.

Changes to the Privacy Policy
The Heritage Foundation reserves the right to change the policy on use of information collected. Any changes in policy will be noted in a revised privacy policy statement and will be posted at least 30 days prior to implementation. You may direct any privacy policy questions to info@heritage.org.